Girl on the Edge shines bright at Toronto Independent
All about those other Toronto film festivals this month
By JASON ANDERSONSpecial to the Star
Thu., Sept. 3, 2015
CaribbeanTales: It may seem like a courageous — and potentially foolhardy — idea to stage any kind of cinematic event while the Toronto International Film Festival is thoroughly dominating our cultural landscape. Then again, there are surely some benefits of braving the chaos when the city is so stuffed with busy industry folk and viewers eager to see just about anything and everything on offer.
An annual showcase and talent incubator for Caribbean filmmakers and their work, CaribbeanTales is one of several fests running in tandem with TIFF over the next two weeks — given that the CTFF is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, perhaps the strategy isn’t so crazy after all.
TUFF movie Family Memoir from David Djindjikhachvili, the Netherlands.
Lee Scratch Perry’s Vision of Paradise plays as part of Caribbean Tales.
The Journey Home opens Friday Sept. 4 in Toronto.
Situated Cinema is a portable theatre that will travel around the city.
Girl on the Edge is part of the Toronto Independent Film Festival.
TUFF movie Family Memoir from David Djindjikhachvili, the Netherlands.
Lee Scratch Perry’s Vision of Paradise plays as part of Caribbean Tales.
The Journey Home opens Friday Sept. 4 in Toronto.
Situated Cinema is a portable theatre that will travel around the city.
Girl on the Edge is part of the Toronto Independent Film Festival.
TUFF movie Family Memoir from David Djindjikhachvili, the Netherlands.
The CTFF launches its slate of screenings at the Royal on Sept. 9 at 8 p.m. with Pan! Our Musical Odyssey, a suitably percussive new doc about the pan drum’s development in Trinidad and Tobago. The program further expresses its musical bent with a screening of Lee Scratch Perry’s Vision of Paradise (Sept. 17 at 9:25 p.m.), a recent primer on the legendarily eccentric master of dub reggae. Many more features, docs and shorts play the Royal through to Sept. 19, when the CTFF wraps up with a LGBTQ-themed program that includes Mala Mala, a portrait of nine members of the trans community in Puerto Rico.
Toronto Urban Film Festival
Another event that proves there is no escape from movies in September, TUFF returns for its annual takeover of the TTC’s hundreds of subway-platform screens. Billed as North America’s largest commuter film festival, TUFF presents silent minute-long films, videos and animated works by remarkably time-conscious artists from all over the world. In addition to the TTC exposure, TUFF selections can also be seen on the Pattison One stop network of screens in over 40 Canadian shopping centers and on the 60-foot video billboard at Yonge and Edward. (More prosaically, they can also be seen on TUFF’s website.) Awards for the best in the fest will be determined by voters and a jury led by guest judge Patricia Rozema. TUFF runs Sept. 12-20.
Toronto Independent Film Festival
Meanwhile at the Carlton, makers of micro-budget and no-budget films find a haven at a scrappy event known as the Toronto Indie (which makes for a catchier and possibly less litigious name than the more obvious acronym). The sixth annual edition launches Sept. 10 at 6 p.m. with Us, a new Canadian comedy that blends animation and live action to tell the tale of old friends reuniting for a blowout. New American titles at the Toronto Indie include Girl on the Edge, a teen drama written by Blue Valentine co-writer Joey Curtis and starring Peter Coyote, Gil Burrows and the late Elizabeth Peña in one of her final roles — it plays Sept. 12 at 9:15 p.m. The Toronto Indie’s array of features, docs, shorts and music videos continues to Sept. 19. See www.film-fest.ca for schedule and more info.
The Situated Cinema
And finally, in what may be the most unique event running in parallel to TIFF, the local experimental media arts group Pleasure Dome celebrates its own 25th anniversary by inviting viewers into the Situated Cinema, a portable theatre that will travel to three different locations around town, including TIFF’s own Festival Street. Curious viewers can enter the specially designed and fabricated structure at the corner of King and Peter (Sept. 10-13), the 8-11 Gallery (Sept. 14-16) and Artscape Youngplace (Sept. 17-20). Once inside the microcinema, they can behold pilgrimage, a new four-minute experimental 16 mm film loop by Halifax filmmaker Solomon Nagler — who also co-created the cinema — and his regular collaborator Alexandre Larose. That is way cooler than watching Netflix on your phone.
A determined boy mounts a quest to reunite a polar bear cub with its mother in the Canadian north in The Journey Home, a family-friendly adventure film that debuted on the festival circuit last year under its original title of Midnight Sun. ER’s Goran Visnjic and Bridget Moynahan appear as two of the non-child/non-bear characters in the latest feature by Ottawa-born director Roger Spottiswoode. The Journey Home opens Sept. 4 in Toronto.